Effective August 2017, the Nazarene Youth Quizzing Official Rules & Guidelines were revised per the direction of the Quizzing Advisory Council (QAC). And while most updates to this manual are typically minor or clarifying in nature, this time a few rules were changed that could have strategic implications on how you play and coach the game.

​When compared line-by-line against the August 2015 Rules, here are the 3 notable changes made to the 2017 edition of the Official Rules & Guidelines:

1. Time-Outs are now permitted after Question 18 has been preannounced

​In 2015, rule 5.13 stated, “No time-out is permitted after question 18 has been preannounced.” That limitation regarding time-outs is no longer in the rules. As a coach, this is strategically significant. I couldn’t count how many times the game situation changed quickly and I wished I could “coach” the team in the final moments of a close match. And sometimes conditions are moving so fast that even the quizzers need a moment to stop and think about what they need to do as a team for the final question in a game. Similar to a basketball game where the coach calls a time-out with 1 second left, sometimes you need to strategize who needs to do what for the last question or two of a tight match.

Personally, I like this change. Why take away a feature of the game just because it is near the end? We don't take away the ability to Challenge or to attempt a Bonus, so why remove time-outs?

2. Quizzers do not need to be standing in order to be recognized by the Quizmaster

​Regarding what constitutes a valid jump, rules 7.1.2 and 7.1.3 were consolidated and shortened to simply read, “The quizzer will begin moving in a forward and upward direction.” The key word added here is forward. Also, the stipulation in the old rules that the quizzer must be moving toward or already in a standing position prior to being recognized by the Quizmaster has been removed.

​In reality, this rule change merely reflects how the game is currently being played. With the advent of computerized jump seats, quizzers typically make one small movement to activate their pad and wait to see who jumped first before standing up. Also, Quizmasters normally recognize the quizzer whose name appears in the jump software regardless of whether the quizzer is still moving, standing, sitting, doing pushups, or whatever.

3. Quizzers may not lean backward or to the side to activate their jump pad

​Regarding jumping, this new rule, 7.2.4, reads, “The quizzer may not lean backwards or to the side as part of their movement.” To be honest, I thought this was already a rule. But upon closer inspection I don’t see it specifically described this way in the August 2015 version. This is a good clarification of what constitutes a valid jump and eliminates any potential “cheesing” or circumventing of the rules to gain an unfair advantage.

Combined with the rule change described above, this means you can no longer utilize leaning to the side as your first move toward a standing position.

​In all, I think these are excellent refinements and, especially in the case of the time-out change, improvements to the way the game is played. Well done, QAC!​So, what do you think? What other rules would you like to see changed or clarified? Comment below and let’s discuss!

The biggest rule change I'd like to see is one that I think is already kind of common sense. It's an assumption that you can't really quiz without-namely, that all questions must have a unique answer. Or at the very least, since question writers can't flip through the entire Scripture portion to check if a question's unique, they could make a rule that says a question not being unique is a valid basis for an appeal. As things stand now, a number of quizmasters will just say that a question that's not unique is perfectly valid and just gives you multiple chances to get it right. But I have two objections to that. One is that if you give an answer that's not on the quizmaster's page, you're going to get called wrong. The other is that you're already quizzing with the assumption that each question is unique. If you jump on "What should you...", you know the question isn't going to be "What should you do?" If you're already looking for unique questions in that sense, it really throws you off to have to factor in questions that aren't unique.

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